The Government of Madeira Assures that they Have not Considered Turning Bitcoin into Legal Tender

Jenson Nunez
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The Government of Madeira Assures that they Have not Considered Turning Bitcoin into Legal Tender

Although there are intentions to encourage the use of digital assets and adopt it as a payment procedure for taxes and other goods, the Madeira government assured that it is not among its plans to make Bitcoin official as legal tender, at least for now.

The Bitcoin 2022 conference brought some very crucial revelations for the digital currency environment, with one of the most important highlights happening during the Samson Mow conference, where officials from various regions revealed their efforts to encourage crypto adoption.

However, there may have been a major misunderstanding with the Madeiran administration, which assured that its intentions don’t gear towards making digital currencies legal tender, at least in the short term.

Madeira has Zero Intentions to Adopt Bitcoin as Legal Tender

This information got clarified by a representative of the presidency of Madeira, who assured that the role of President Miguel Albuquerque did not express that Bitcoin would become legal tender for the autonomous country, since he did not reveal anything about alleged intentions to apply such intentions, contradicting the information revealed by various specialized media outlets.

The representative assured that the main goal that would get achieved is that Bitcoin would become a valid method of payment for various products and goods, in the same way, that digital currency can help to pay taxes. However, it is not in the discussion to grant status to BTC as the currency officially embraced by the country.

The idea is to promote Madeira as a center for innovation

The opinion of the representative of the presidency of Madeira goes in parallel with what President Albuquerque highlighted in an interview given to a local media. There, he clarified that his role in Bitcoin 2022 happened with the sole intention of encouraging the independent nation as a technological region that guarantees technological improvements.

Only in El Salvador

The confusion created a lot of interest among the users since the alleged plans gave rise to the belief that the independent nation would follow El Salvador in terms of the official adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender.

The government of El Salvador made Bitcoin official as legal tender in September of last year, this event occurred after the local president, Nayib Bukele revealed his intentions to make this adoption possible and sent the bill that would make those intentions real and legal.

The adoption of BTC came along with a series of other procedures, such as intentions to encourage Bitcoin crypto mining powered by geothermal energy sources, the future issuance of bonds focused on the digital asset, as well as the creation of an ambitious city named Bitcoin City, which is an urban project scheduled for the next ten years.

The step that El Salvador took also set off alarms among governments and international entities. One of them was the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has repeatedly warned the local government and invites them to undo the procedure as soon as possible, even menacing other regions with certain sanctions in case they continue with those procedures.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Two Ukrainian NBA Stars Want to Help their Country with Bitcoin Donations

Alexander Salazar
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Two Ukrainian NBA Stars Want to Help their Country with Bitcoin Donations

The two Ukrainian players will promote donations in the pioneering cryptocurrency for their country. Svi Mykhailiuk will display a QR code on his basketball shoes to donate Bitcoin.

Two Ukrainian players from the US National Basketball Association (NBA) will promote donations in Bitcoin through special shoes and other strategies. They seek to alleviate the humanitarian crisis that their country is suffering due to the war with Russia.

Svi Mykhailiuk and Alex Len, the stars involved in the initiative, are players in the Toronto Raptors and the Sacramento Kings, respectively. Both will collaborate with the donation campaign to help their native country in various ways.

Mykhailiuk will wear special basketball shoes with a QR code whose scanning will redirect funds to a Bitcoin address. The European country will receive that money to solve the problems caused by the conflict with Russia. They started to use that strategy on April 16th when the Raptors faced the Philadelphia 76ers in the opening playoff round.

Since the team of Len did not qualify, it will not participate in the final stage of the season (the playoffs). However, that player will support the move through posts on social networks and other actions to promote the donations.

Both players know that the pioneering cryptocurrency is the most effective way to send money instantly to those who need it. In addition, they said that it has a minimum cost and there is no possibility of censorship by any government.

Bitcoin Is a Resource in Times of Difficulty

It is not the first time Ukraine has received cryptocurrency donations, as the government formally accepted them in late February. They reached USD 37 million worth of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether in just a few days.

In other countries, the cryptocurrency created by Satoshi Nakamoto has allowed citizens to manage their funds without any third-party intervention. That made it possible to collaborate with social causes like the Canadian Freedom Convoy without any censorship, even when the government tried to prevent it many times.

The NBA Is Increasingly Related to Bitcoin

Many industries like the NBA are increasingly trying to take advantage of Bitcoin as a business. In mid-November, the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers stadium Staples Center changed its name to Crypto.com Arena. The well-known cryptocurrency exchange had acquired the naming rights of the sports building.

Similarly, the FTX exchange agreed to sponsor two NBA franchises, the Golden State Warriors and the Washington Wizards, in late 2021.

Those two events prove that the NBA players are no longer the only ones interested in Bitcoin and its possibilities. The league has also set its eyes on cryptocurrencies to profit from that growing industry worldwide.

Bitcoin is trading at around USD 39,838 and has accumulated a 1.0% loss over the last 24 hours. Its trading volume is above USD 17.09 billion, and its market capitalization is about USD 757.81 billion.

By Alexander Salazar

Argentine Securities Commission Releases Crypto and Fintech Innovation Center

Jenson Nunez
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Argentine Securities Commission Releases Crypto and Fintech Innovation Center

The Argentine securities regulator has created an innovation center to lead debates regarding regulated crypto investments.

The National Securities Commission (CNV), Argentina’s securities regulator, released an innovation center to encourage more discussions and conversations regarding digital assets and investments in financial technology, fintech.

This organization will connect private organizations and the entity to pave new ways to reach new fintech and crypto-regulated instruments in the market.

Argentine media highlighted that this creation happened because the National Securities Commission is implementing procedures to stimulate the arrival on the market of new investment instruments focused on financial technology and digital assets.

In addition, the innovation center will connect private investors with regulators to exchange information on the requirements that these items must meet to get launched on the market.

Measures against Scam Attacks

The most significant problem with the hub is the increasing rate of attacks related to crypto in the country since crypto adoption peaked.

Likewise, according to local sources, there are two goals behind regulating investments in digital assets in the country. One is the protection of investors looking to put funds into crypto markets by launching controlled products.

Another goal is the benefit that the national tax agency could get by improving tax collection due to user earnings with digital investment.

Furthermore, this innovation hub could usher in a new era of regulated crypto investment products in Argentina, opined Andrés Ponte, president of Matba Rofex, an investment brokerage company.

Also, in March, the Senate of the Argentine Republic yesterday gave the green light to a loan agreement to boost the debt of USD 45 billion with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which got also connected to a provision that discourages the use of digital assets in the nation.

Likewise, in March, Argentina’s Financial Information Unit (FIU) started working to include entities connected to the digital asset industry in the list of companies subject to anti-money laundering reporting requirements.

Regulators Keep a Close Eye on Digital Assets

Regulators in other countries have also been improving their regulations to force crypto businesses to comply with AML and KYC standards.

As Decrypt recalled, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) already made the same move in March 2021. Since that time, businesses related to crypto-assets got required to file annual financial crime statements, statements that document, for example, the number of suspicious activities generated in the reporting period.

“This policy statement proposes that companies and crypto-asset businesses should get included in the scope of the return based on their business activities and potential money laundering risks,” the FCA said.

The United States and European countries have also been working on expanding the scope of their regulations to encompass the burgeoning digital currency sector.

Meanwhile, the Argentine government has been toughening its stance on the crypto industry. In February, the Argentine Secretary of Energy raised the cost of energy for Bitcoin miners. The economy minister said that more taxes should get implemented for crypto operations more recently.

By: Jenson Nuñez

FBI Determined the Provenance of Axie Infinity Hackers While they Keep Laundering the Extracted Currencies

Jenson Nunez
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FBI Determined the Provenance of Axie Infinity Hackers While they Keep Laundering the Extracted Currencies

The hackers have already extracted at least 30,000 Ethers from the wallet where the stolen funds got housed. The FBI explained that the attackers who hit the Ronin network were North Korean.

The hackers who extracted more than USD 600 million in ether (ETH) after an attack on the Ronin network from the video game Axie Infinity have been absorbing their loot step by step; they have done so through a mixer they can hide the funds from authorities.

Shortly after the attack of the bridge that links the Ronin network to the Ethereum main chain got made public, the attackers began migrating small pieces of ill-gotten ether to Tornado Cash-related accounts.

Tornado Cash is a tool that mixes the digital assets it receives through a smart contract, which acts as a party between the origin and destination addresses. This feature aims to encourage the privacy of operations led on networks such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain.

So far, attackers got to mix almost 30,000 ether from his account using Tornado Cash. This amount equals at least USD 90 million, according to the price of ETH in the crypto market.

Thanks to the US Department of the Treasury punishing the main account, the hackers have had to use alternate accounts to withdraw funds. This action further limits the mobility of capital directly from that account.

Some of the alternate addresses used by the attackers also got detected as Ronin Bridge Exploiter on Etherscan, the Ethereum chain explorer.

Cryptocurrency mixers can make tracking a transaction quite hard; however, they do not make it an impossible task. For this reason, the administrators of Tornado Cash are using a tool brought by the Chainalisys platform, which helps to follow transactions in these cases. This type of tool got called an oracle.

The tracking oracle designed by Chainalisys is a free tool, although it has its limitations. Roman Semenov, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, explained via his Twitter account that he applied to obtain the paid services of the research firm. Still, until that moment, he had not received a response about this matter.

The FBI Expressed that the Hackers of the Network that Hosts Axie Infinity are North Korean

Last Thursday, April 14, the FBI attributed the attack on the Ronin network of the video game Axie Infinity to a group of North Korean hackers known as Lazarus Group. This organization got responsible for some of the most prominent attacks, such as the Sony hack and the Wannacry ransomware.

There have been no official details from the Lazarus Group acknowledging its responsibility in the cyberattack on the Ronin network bridge, developed by the company Sky Mavis.

For the worst possible outcome of this situation, in which the funds get lost, and the wrongdoers remain free, Sky Mavis has already executed a plan B to ensure that the company keeps carrying out its activities and that its investors can get back their funds.

By: Jenson Nuñez

Bitcoin Price: Are the Bears Winning?

Audy Castañeda
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Bitcoin Price: Are the Bears Winning?

Analysts give their opinion about what is happening with the price of Bitcoin.

Now it seems that the bears win the battle. This was the opinion of Alexis Texeiro, corporate analyst at Global Markets and data analyst at Bit2Me, through his LinkedIn account

“Although spot Bitcoin appears to be doing well, interestingly enough, Valkyrie’s Bitcoin Miners ETF, $WGMI, has outperformed Bitcoin spot returns over the past month. Despite all the macro pressure, institutions are still looking for a way forward to invest in Bitcoin through the legacy markets,” he explained.

He then said that, “underneath it all is a fraying phase of re-accumulation. Net outflows of $BTC from exchanges have only occurred in recent volume four times in history and just prior to parabolic rallies, as seen in the Glassnode graph Many metrics look good, the danger today is that in crypto we have risks of contagion.”

Although the price of Bitcoin has found momentary stability these days at USD 40,000, the current market sentiment is one of “extreme fear”, according to the Fear & Greed index. This means that fear that its value will drop, investors could sell the funds they have in the cryptocurrency, causing more supply than demand and, therefore, a decrease in the value of the currency.

This has already become evident in the behavior of the whales, that is, of the investors who own large volumes of Bitcoin. This was specified by the analyst Ali Martínez, who reported that the chain data shows that, in four days, the number of addresses in the network with more than USD 10,000 in BTC has decreased by 4.6%.

Contrasting Views on the Matter

On the other hand, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Clavijo, who works as R&D Financial Consultant at Asset, also expressed himself through LinkedIn, and according to his opinion, “we are in the aversion phase, caused by anxiety.”

Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Clavijo also pointed out: “It shouldn’t take long for our beloved parabola to arrive; I think it will touch USD 35-37k first and then clear strongly.”

However, Texeiro later added that, “it is very important the movement of the dollar, I think it is about to dump from an area where whenever it hits the bull runs in crypto start.”

Diego Morín, an analyst at IG, has pointed out that, “the main cryptocurrencies have found some ‘weakness’ in recent days, in part, due to the Easter holiday period, which has caused a certain drop in the volume traded. However, after the volatility since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, we could be looking at a consolidation phase in the market.” On Bitcoin, he stressed that, “it is leaving behind the psychological support of $40,000, a level where we find many disputes between bidders and buyers. Now, the goal may be to seek a ‘pullback’ towards $40,000 dollars, but the possibility of a beginning of price strengthening is gaining strength.”

Bitcoin’s movement shows a similar correlation to Nasdaq-listed stocks of technology companies. Something that is not favorable for the cryptocurrency, according to analysts who believe that these markets will not perform well due to the economic crisis that the United States is going through due to the increase in inflation and taxes.

Although it is worth clarifying that not all of the current panorama is black for Bitcoin. Although there are large investors who are selling their BTC pushing down, others are doing the opposite. The Terra and MicroStrategy companies made multi-million dollar purchases of the cryptocurrency when it was trading close to 46,000.

Unlike the specialists who fear a price drop, the data analysis account Plan C believes that the holders could get a bullish movement for the cryptocurrency. This is because it estimates that it is the fourth time in history that BTC has managed to overcome a key metric, which calculates the awareness of those who hold it in the long term over those who do it for a short period. In the past, the capitalization of this data led to a price increase, a behavior that could happen again.

By Audy Castaneda

Dollar Strength Mimics 2020 Coronavirus Crash: Five Things to Watch about Bitcoin this Week

Audy Castañeda
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Dollar Strength Mimics 2020 Coronavirus Crash: Five Things to Watch about Bitcoin this Week

Easter weekend makes Bitcoin bulls suffer.

Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week with everything quiet in the traditional markets but with a storm brewing when it comes to the crypto space.

As the long Easter weekend continues for the United States and much of Europe, traders are watching whether Bitcoin can hold steady for four days without the involvement of professional investors.

Since Good Friday, the BTC/USD pair has experienced sideways action punctuated by bouts of sudden volatility to the downside. That continued overnight into Monday, and now the $40,000 level is out of reach again. What will the atmosphere be like in the coming days?

Here we look at potential market-moving factors that may influence Bitcoin price performance this week.

Holiday Cheer Costs Bitcoin $40,000

It is a frustrating time for Bitcoin spot traders. Without traditional market guidance, Bitcoin faces four “after-hours” trading days, meaning liquidity is tighter than normal.

This scenario has already occurred several times during the Easter weekend. Although most of the time it has traded sideways, the BTC/USD pair has suffered bouts of flash declines from which it has had a hard time recovering.

On Sunday night, the market fell over $1,000 in a matter of minutes, including an $800 loss on a single one-minute candle.

With this, the support of $39,000 was lost, as confirmed by data from the on-chain monitoring resource Material Indicators.

On Friday, Material Indicators noted the block of buyer support immediately below the spot price, which is now non-existent and opens up the possibility of a much deeper pullback, involving Bitcoin’s 200-week moving average (200 WMA).

The 200-week moving average is currently above $21,000, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView. The level is highly significant as spot price has never broken it during bear markets, and has risen continuously throughout Bitcoin’s history.

Despite the potentially dodgy holiday price performance, few seemed surprised by the idea that crypto markets en masse are poised for further losses.

Macro has many surprises up his sleeve

With western markets closed until Tuesday, there is little room for a macroeconomic-induced move in the cryptocurrency space.

Asian markets were mostly flat throughout Monday; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up a modest 0.67% and the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.67% at the time of writing.

However, the global financial markets have not been easy this month, as the current situation is uncharted territory. The increase in inflation, along with minimum interest rates, is one of the novelties.

For market commentator Holger Zschaepitz, the focus is on international bond markets, which have lost $6.4 trillion since hitting their all-time highs last year.

DXY Faces “Do or Die” Decision

DXY has a habit of running against the price of bitcoin, and while that inverse correlation has been broken to some extent in the past year, the odds remain that a major drop for USD is a boon for BTC.

“If we see DXY roll back on this trend line, get ready for a strong send,” market commentator Johal Miles summed up on Sunday.

Lowest Stock Market Balances since Mid-2018

According to the latest data, not only are buyers continuing to move large tranches of coins off exchanges into cold storage, but also the overall balance of BTC on those exchanges is now at new multi-year lows.

Figures from on-chain analytics firm CyptoQuant confirm that the balance of 21 major exchanges was 2.274 million BTC on Sunday. The last time the level was this low was in July 2018.

Sentiment in Cryptospace Diverges Towards “Extreme Fear”

The current state of the Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index may give investors another pause for thought. At 24/100 as of Monday, the index is back in the “extreme fear” zone, having more than halved since early April.

Although equally famous for its fickle nature, the cryptocurrency market sentiment could be a warning to those hoping the good times will continue regardless.

By Audy Castaneda

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